News

Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Saunders, and Sally Phillips have joined the ensemble cast of the adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Night & Day.’

The trio will join the previously announced Haley Bennett who will play the lead, with BAFTA-winner Timothy Spall, British singer Lily Allen and German superstar Elyas M’Barek.

Set in an era when glass ceilings were made of concrete, Bennett will play Katharine Hilbery — one woman who insisted on reaching for the stars. Based on what has been called Woolf’s funniest novel, Night and Day is described as an “unromantic comedy” about a passionate astronomer who does everything she can to avoid romantic love and marriage. Contemporary in tone, the story of Katharine’s bold challenge to the Edwardian patriarchy is set against the backdrop of the suffragette movement and advances in science and technology, at the turn of the 20th century.

Also in news – BIFA Announce nominations...

"I spent all my money to make the movie..." Some of you may have heard of this film before, some of you maybe not. But now it's screening again with a glorious 4K re-release thanks to Mubi – this interview might convince you to watch. Tarsem's film The Fall is considered a masterpiece by some critics, a flop by others, though it is being given a chance to shine again 18 years later with this restoration. The Fall 4K "Restored Cut" originally premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival a few months ago, and just debuted streaming on Mubi. During the premiere, Letterboxd caught up with filmmaker Tarsem Singh and asked him to read some of the recent Letterboxd reviews raving about the film. The result is this extra fascinating 8-minute video where Tarsem goes on and on telling amazing stories about the film and the process and how hard it was to make & distribute.

Fantastical storytelling underpins Tarsem’s 2006 film, in which an injured stuntman relates an elaborate fable to a young girl

Tarsem Singh’s indulgent epic, produced by Spike Jonze and David Fincher, was little seen on its original release in 2006, and now gets a rerelease in a 4K restoration on the Mubi streaming platform. It’s certainly worth noticing, with its Gilliamesque surrealism, and its setting in Rajasthan, north-western India, offers wonderful landscapes. Its beguiling set pieces feature Justine Waddell playing some deadpan comedy as a gloriously costumed princess – although I have to admit that in general the film’s rather placid, stately, fantasy style can be exasperatingly inert.

The scene is Los Angeles in the early years of silent pictures; Lee Pace plays Roy, a stuntman who is now seriously, perhaps permanently, injured. He is laid up in hospital and deeply depressed after a dangerous fall filming a movie whose...

"You always stop at the same part when it's beautiful." Mubi has unveiled an official trailer for the new 4K restoration and re-release of the cult classic film The Fall, the second feature from the acclaimed, visionary Indian filmmaker known as Tarsem. This film initially premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, then toured to other festivals throughout 2007, got lost in the mix and eventually opened in 2008 but it failed big time at the box office. It later became a beloved cult classic, revered for its splendid cinematography and vivid visual storytelling. In silent-era Hollywood, stuntman Roy Walker is brought to a hospital after an on-set accident. There, he befriends a young girl and tells her a fantastical tale of epic heroes taking revenge on an evil ruler. The mesmerizing story transports her from the hospital into the many exotic landscapes of her imagination. Starring Lee Pace in one of his first roles,...

Exclusive: Arthouse streamer and distributor Mubi is set to re-release Tarsem’s cult 2006 film The Fall in a newly restored 4K version from 27 September 2024 in the US, Canada, Latin America, the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Benelux, Turkey and India. The Match Factory is handling sales for the rest of the world.

The 4K restoration will have its world premiere at this year’s Locarno Film Festival where it will play on the Piazza Grande. Mubi will subsequently stream it on its service.

Set in Los Angeles, circa 1920s, the visually striking movie charts the story of an immigrant girl in a hospital recovering from a fall who strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man. He captivates her with a whimsical story that removes her far from the hospital doldrums into the exotic landscapes of her imagination.

Filmed over four years in 20 different locations across the globe, the movie starred Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru and Justine Waddell. The film was originally presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze, with a script from Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis.

Reviews were mixed for the film and it failed to ignite at the box office, but its visuals were highly praised and Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars, calling it a singular work: “You might want to see [it] for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it,” he said.

After debuting at Toronto back in 2006, the film became very hard to track down on streaming services and director Tarsem recently expressed hope the feature would soon get a revival.

Tarsem Singh, known as Tarsem, is also known for movies such as The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez, The Immortals starring Henry Cavill, Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts and Self/less with Ryan Reynolds. The filmmaker is also well known for his music videos, including Rem’s Losing My Religion, which won MTV’s Best Video Award. In 2023, he directed his first feature film in Punjabi, Dear Jassi which won the Platform Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Lily Allen is the latest star ready to lighten up Night and Day, an adaptation of the comedic Virginia Woolf novel.

The singer and actress joins a cast that includes Haley Bennett, Elyas M’Barek and Timothy Spall, who will bring to life the 1919 novel revolving around the daily lives and romances of two women. Katharine Hilbery (Bennett), is an Edwardian astronomer who avoids love, while Mary (Allen) is a straight-talking, fearless, funny suffragette. Jack Farthing rounds out the cast for the feature.

Justine Waddell penned the script and will produce, with BAFTA nominee Tina Gharavi directing the feature, which is aiming to shoot this fall in Newcastle, England and Cologne, Germany.

Financing company FilmHedge has come on board to back the project, withs its founder and CEO Jon Gosier and its COO Chandler Heinz Laun serving as executive producers, along with Konstantin Korenchuk.

Producers include Christopher Figg, Meg Thomson and German co-producers Glisk,...

“The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” which spotlights the doomed ship in Bram Stoker’s oft-adapted 1897 novel, is the second Dracula film released in 2023 after “Renfield.” Both take generous liberties with the source material, which brings up the question: Out of the 200-some films about the famous Count, which ones are the most faithful?

Here’s our ranking of some of the most popular, and a few lesser-known, Dracula adaptations.

Universal

8. Renfield (2023)

Pretty much the only thing this horror comedy has in common with the novel is Nicholas Hoult as the bug-eating title character and a delightfully campy Nicolas Cage as his bloodthirsty boss. The movie brings them both into the 21st century, makes Renfield an ass-kicking hero and swaps out Lucy and Mina for Awkwafina’s incorruptible cop.

Miramax

7. Dracula 2000 (2000)

The film begins with a shot of the wrecked Demeter and footprints in the sand as Dracula heads to town.

Haley Bennett (Cyrano, Swallow, The Girl On The Train) is set to lead Night and Day, Justine Waddell’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel, to be directed by BAFTA nominee Tina Gharavi (I Am Nasrine, Cleopatra: African Queens). WestEnd Films has boarded the the German-Irish-u.K. co-production and is introducing the project to buyers in Cannes.

Set in an era when glass ceilings were made of concrete, Bennett will play Katharine Hilbery — one woman who insisted on reaching for the stars. Based on what has been called Woolf’s funniest novel, Night and Day is described as an “unromantic comedy” about a passionate astronomer who does everything she can to avoid romantic love and marriage. Contemporary in tone, the story of Katharine’s bold challenge to the Edwardian patriarchy is set against the backdrop of the suffragette movement and advances in science and technology, at the turn of the 20th century.

Varèse Sarabande Records has announced the upcoming CD release of Dracula 2000 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Academy Award®-nominated Marco Beltrami. The limited edition soundtack will be released on July 24, as a standalone record for the first time ever—with only 1,000 copies available. With the announcement of this exciting upcoming release, pre-order is available now on varesesarabande.com.

Dracula 2000 made its official CD debut in Varèse Sarabande’s sold-out 2016 box set, “Little Box of Horrors.” The album was mastered by James Nelson from sources provided by Marco Beltrami. The CD booklet includes extensive liner notes by film music journalist Daniel Schweiger.

Marco Beltrami has received Academy Award®-nominations for his iconic scores to 3:10 to Yuma and The Hurt Locker. He has also lent his voice to such hit films as Live Free or Die Hard, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I, Robot and the Scream series.

See...

Mubi is exclusively showing Alexander Zeldovich's Target (2011) from December 16 - January 14, 2017 in the United States.The natural terrain so revered in the past of Russian art is a largely digital entity in the future of Alexander Zeldovich’s Target, overlaid with megacities and serpentine highways and casually picked at by supercilious characters. (One of the protagonists contemplates a rare volcanic nugget and sticks it in his breast pocket, as if filching a novelty pen.) The year is 2020, and Moscow is a sleek network of glass compartments, robotic chimes, and Chinese billboards. Describing himself as “the King of the Mountain,” the Minister of Natural Resources (Maksim Sukhanov) has luxury and power and a gorgeous wife (Justine Waddell) purchased at the “bridal fair,” but that’s not enough—youth is the ultimate grail, finally available in a deserted excavation near the Mongolian border, where celestial radiation has a mysterious anti-aging effect on visitors.

Halt and Catch Fire, AMC’s smart, slick series about the fledgling computer industry of the 1980s, is California dreamin’. Joe, Cameron, Gordon, and Donna have all left Texas’ Silicon Prairie for Silicon Valley. “It gets out of the garage very quickly and we’re in the big leagues now,” series star Lee Pace tells HitFix of Halt’s new season debuting later this month. Halt and Catch Fire (which takes its name from an early computer command) started off with salesman/visionary Joe MacMillan’s race to compete with Ibm’s personal computer. Season 2 shifted its focus to online gaming. Now Halt and Catch Fire is going into its third season, which is longer than either of Pace’s previous television shows lasted. His team-ups with Bryan Fuller, Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls, were canceled before their time, in the former case cutting short Pace’s endearing, Emmy-nominated role as the pie-maker Ned.

Horror cinema has a long tradition of creating iconic characters and none more so than those borne in the early days of the genre: characters such as Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and, of course, Dracula – the king of horror. A character who, despite his many cinematic deaths, always returns to the silver screen for one more bite of flesh… As he does this week in Dracula Untold, which features Luke Evans as the evil Vlad Tepes.

With that in mind we thought we’d rundown the ten best unforgettable Dracula performances in cinema. Check them out below and let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree!

Christopher Lee – Dracula (1958)

Dracula (1958) is the first in the series of Hammer Horror films. Directed by Terence Fisher, Dracula (1958) stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh and Michael Gough. Retitled Horror of Dracula...

UK film-makers are in the spotlight at the fifth edition of Vologda’s Voices festival (July 4-8), which will open with Ken Loach’s Cannes Competition film Jimmy’s Hall.

British actress Justine Waddell, who learnt Russian for her role in Alexander Zeldovich’s Target (Mishen), will join the competition’s international jury, including Moscow Film Festival programme director Kirill Razlogov, Russian actress Olga Sutulova, and Armenian-French actor-director-producer Serge Avedikian, with writer-director Svetlana Proskurina as jury chairperson.

The competition line-up of 10 first and second features are as follows:

Life Feels Good, dir: Maciej Pieprzyca, PolandStill Life, dir: Uberto Pasolini, UKClass Enemy, dir: Rok Bicek, SloveniaBlind, dir: Eskil Vogt, NorwayStereo, dir: Maximilian Erlenwein, GermanyThe Art Of Happiness, dir: Alessandro Rak, ItalyWolf, dir: Jim Taihuttu, The NetherlandsTo See The Sea, dir: Jirí Mádl, Czech RepublicWhen Animals Dream, dir: Jonas Alexander Arnby, DenmarkSkinless, dir: Vladimir Beck, Russia.

Sidebars include the out-of-competition European section with such films as The Great Beauty...

Chantal Akerman (center), Almayer's Folly World Cinema Selections Almayer's Folly: Chantal Akerman loosely adapts Joseph Conrad’s novel set in Malaysia, the tragic tale of a failed European trader and his "mixed blood" daughter. Dir Chantal Akerman. Cast Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion, Zac Andrianasolo. Belgium/France. U.S. Premiere. Alps: Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a tale of a group offering an unusual service for grieving families: They inhabit the role of the recently deceased. Dir Yorgos Lanthimos. Scr Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. Cast Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Ariane Labed, Johnny Vekris. Greece/France. U.S. Premiere. CARRÉ Blanc: One of the strongest debuts in years, CARRÉ Blanc is a dystopian sci-fi vision of a world with limited resources and limitless cruelty. Dir/Scr Jean-Baptiste Léonetti. Cast Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Andreani, Fejria Deliba, Valerie Bodson. France/Luxembourg/Russia/Belgium/Switzerland. The Day He Arrives:...

Ahead of Halloween, Lions Gate Home Entertainment have given us this lovely boxset from West Craven called Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 3 movie collection to give away to three lucky winners. The movies star Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Roy Scheider and Rutger Hauer and are all three killer films together in one boxset for the first time.

Wes Craven Presents 3 films in one complete horror boxset. Starring Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Rutger Hauer and many more.

Dracula 2001: A gang of high-tech thieves, led by Marcus (Omar Epps) and Solina (Jennifer Esposito), break into a vault buried deep in the heart of London hoping to find treasure. Instead, they succeed in reviving an ancient evil–the legendary Count Dracula himself (Gerard Butler), who terrorized England a century earlier until he was stopped by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. Now, Dracula makes his way to modern New Orleans to track...

Nick Hamm’s knockabout comedy, Killing Bono, is released in UK cinemas today. It stars Ben Barnes, Robert Sheehan, Peter Serofinowicz, Martin McCann, Justine Waddell and the late and very great Pete Postlethwaite in his final screen outing.

It’s a funny movie packed with music and has the feel of a caper.where winning a record contract has been replaced with doing a bank job. To celebrate its release today we’ve got two clips to show off. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you love all things U2. You can read our review here and check out our tribute actor Pete Postlethwaite here.

Synopsis:

Killing Bono is a rock n’ roll comedy about two Irish brothers struggling to forge their path through the 1980′s music scene… whilst the meteoric rise to fame of their old school pals U2 only serves to cast them deeper into the shadows.

Neil McCormick...

Though it slipped past us somehow the 2011 Berlin Film Festival released the first block of titles from their Panorama section yesterday and there are some very familiar names in there, among them Ryoo Seung-Wan's The Unjust, Jorge Padilha's Elite Squad 2, Angelique Bosio's The Advocate For Fagdom and Hugo Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape - all of which have received coverage here in the pages of Twitch. You want the complete list? Here it is:

Panorama Main Programme + Panorama Special Bu-dang-geo-rae (The Unjust) by Seung-wan Ryoo, Republic of Koreawith Jung-min Hwang, Seung-bum Ryoo, Hae-jin Yoo Chang-Pi-Hae (Ashamed) by Soo-hyun Kim, Republic of Koreawith Hyo-jin Kim, Kkobbi Kim Dance Town by Kyu-hwan Jeon, Republic of Koreawith Mir-an Ra, Seong-tae Oh The Devil's Double by Lee Tamahori, Belgiumwith Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier Dirty Girl by Abe Sylvia, USAwith Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy, Dwight Yoakam, Mary Steenburgen, Jeremy Dozier...

Bigger Picture

NEW YORK -- A psycho-killer movie featuring less gore and more moral and religious philosophizing pretty much sums up "Three", adapted from the best-selling novel by Ted Dekker. This family-friendly thriller -- with a villain bearing somewhat of a resemblance to Jigsaw in the "Saw" series with his penchant for putting his victims through mind games and riddles before committing his mayhem -- is being marketed by Fox Faith, 20th Century Fox's Christian-themed label, but it seems unlikely that it will attract many of the faithful.

The film's hero is Kevin Parson (Marc Blucas), a young seminary student who seems to have an unknown connection to Slater (Bill Moseley), otherwise known as RK, or the "riddle killer." Kevin's first encounter with him is literally explosive, as he answers a cell phone that has been placed in his car only to hear a distorted voice telling him that unless he can solve a riddle in three minutes he will be blown up. Failing to pass the test, he manages to escape just in time.

Thus begins the inevitable cat-and-mouse game, with Kevin forced to undergo a series of such tests and the price for failure being more death and destruction. Helping him wade through the mystery, which apparently involves his upbringing by an abusive aunt (Priscilla Barnes), are a criminal psychologist (Justine Waddell) with a tragic personal connection with the killer, as well as Kevin's former childhood sweetheart (Laura Jordan).

The fairly routine plot is made somewhat more interesting by the infusion of issues regarding morality and faith, but ultimately "Three", for all its philosophizing, is little more than a standard serial-killer movie with pretensions.

TORONTO -- If any doubt remains about Tarsem Singh's interest in narrative for its own sake, The Fall should put it to rest: The advertising and music video vet wants nothing more from a plot than an excuse to string together luscious images.

Without the star power and genre appeal of his previous film, The Cell, The Fall will be handicapped at the box office. What it does have going for it in commercial terms -- whimsy and an adorable little girl playing the lead -- are offset by Singh's occasional use of unsettlingly graphic gore.

Using sickbed storytelling as a frame for fantasy a la The Princess Bride, The Fall begins in a 1920s Los Angeles hospital, where young Alexandria, daughter of immigrant orange pickers, is recovering from a broken arm. She befriends Roy, a movie stuntman who has been maimed on set and lost his gal to boot. Roy begins spinning a long yarn for Alexandria, hoping to gain her trust so that she'll fetch him enough morphine to kill himself.

The story, as it unfolds in the girl's mind's eye, stars a quartet of heroes out to kill an evil emperor. Clothed by designer Eiko Ishioka (how is it that she has not made more movies?), each member of the team is a bit wilder than Roy's description. Charles Darwin, for instance, wears an enormous coat of red, black, and white fur.

For a few scenes, considerable charm comes from the way Alexandria misunderstands what she hears, colors it with her own experience, and updates it as she gets new information. While Roy is imagining a Native American when he describes one member of the group as an Indian, she envisions a mysterious warrior from India; a vast desert has lush gardens just over the hill when Roy makes a reference to grass.

This is charming, brain teasing, and even holds some promise as a catalyst for examining how we ourselves fill in the gaps of stories we hear. But Tarsem and his screenwriting collaborators aren't able to come up with enough interesting justifications for their sudden shifts, and soon the shape-shifting yarn just feels like lazy storytelling.

Whatever its narrative merits, the mutating tale is a magic tool for Tarsem, letting him hop around the world to use desert dunes, forgotten temples, and vast ruins as settings for his action. If he wants to see what a flaming carriage looks like in an ocean of sand, or to watch an elephant swim, he just writes a couple of lines of dialogue. Visually, the result is enthralling; technically, it must have been hell to make; critically, there's no way to discredit it.

But having a story whose characters and motivations shift so arbitrarily means that viewers have no stake in it emotionally. Those who are so inclined will let their minds wander, asking, "Haven't I seen that image somewhere?" and "Are the Quay Brothers going to sue over the way that hallucination sequence apes their work?"

Others will walk out mildly dissatisfied, but happy that someone was able to bring such astounding images to the big screen. Until Tarsem's advertising clients start to commission full-blown, huge-budget ads for the cinema, a half-baked fairy tale will have to do.

THE FALL

No U.S. Distributor

Absolute Entertainment, Treetop Films

Credits:

Director: Tarsem

Writer: Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis, Tarsem, based on the film Yo Ho Ho by Zaco Heskija

Producer: Tarsem

Executive producers: Ajit Singh, Tommy Turtle

Director of photography: Colin Watkinson

Production designer: Ged Clarke

Costumes: Eiko Ishioka

Music: Krishna Levy

Editor: Robert Duffy.

Cast: Alexandria: Catinca Untaru

Roy Walker: Lee Pace

Evelyn: Justine Waddell

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 118 minutes...

Wesley Snipes, Ryan Phillippe, Jason Statham and Justine Waddell are teaming to star in the action thriller Chaos for filmmaker Tony Giglio, sources confirmed. Shooting is scheduled to start March 17 in Vancouver. Giglio will direct from his own script, which is described as a bank heist tale of a rookie and veteran cop, played by Phillippe and Statham, respectively, in pursuit of bank robber (Snipes) who knows too much about the inner workings of the police department. Waddell plays a female officer who has a personal connection to one of the cops.

ABC has greenlighted a three-hour biopic about Natalie Wood with Oscar-nominated director Peter Bogdanovich on board to direct and British actress Justine Waddell set to portray the late Hollywood star. The yet-untitled film, which will air during the 2003-04 season, is based on Suzanne Finstads' book Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. Elizabeth Egloff wrote the small-screen adaptation, which is set to start production in the winter in Australia. Gerald W. Abrams (TNT's Nuremberg), Bob Sertner, Frank von Zerneck (We Were the Mulvaneys) and Finstad are executive producing, with Richard Fischoff and Randy Sutter producing. Wood's sister, Lana Wood, will co-produce. The movie will focus on Wood's deep inner conflict between her real self -- Natasha Zakharenko, born to Russian immigrants in San Francisco -- and the glamorous Natalie Wood persona created by her ambitious mother and shaped by the powerful studio system.